Gov. Maura Healey launched a “comprehensive housing plan” Thursday morning, outlining methods to decrease prices and construct 220,000 new models over the following decade to mitigate the state’s ongoing housing disaster.
“This is the first time this kind of comprehensive statewide planning for housing has ever been done in Massachusetts history,” Healey stated Thursday morning. “We’re very, very serious about building more housing, and this kind of plan and report is absolutely central to us being able to build.”
The plan, titled “A Home for Everyone: Massachusetts’ Statewide Housing Plan,” gives an evaluation of the states housing wants — noting each area in Massachusetts requires extra housing — and methods to create extra housing and maintain households in properties.
The plan was developed with the Housing Advisory Council, which Healey fashioned by govt order in August. On the identical time, the governor signed a $5.2 billion housing bond invoice, the Reasonably priced Houses Act, which invested within the development and preservation of 65,000 housing models, up to date zoning regulation and took different steps aimed to handle affordability and the state’s scarcity.
The plan launched Thursday requires a 7% improve in housing models statewide by 2035, or 220,000 properties.
“At the root of our challenge with the costs is a shortage of homes,” Healey stated. “And it’s a shortage, as I say, that has built up over many years, as our state was not building the housing that we needed to keep pace with our economic growth.”
Massachusetts has constructed a mean of “19,000 units per year from 2010 to 2020, but only 11,600
homes were issued building permits in 2023,” the launched housing plan notes, citing boundaries to development to handle. Throughout the state, the share of properties out there on the market or lease is 1.6%, “a historically low vacancy rate,” the plan states.
Methods outlined within the launch embrace defending, preserving and restoring inexpensive properties; offering direct subsidies and rising entry to homeownership for first-time homebuyers; stopping evictions and foreclosures; and dealing with employers on workforce housing wants.
State officers famous the plan included enter from 3,000 individuals and 14 regional listening classes over the past 12 months.
Better Boston Actual Property Board (GBREB) management referred to as the plan a “necessary reminder that state and local leaders must prioritize reducing red tape to incentivize housing creation across all price points.”
“The most well-intentioned policies, like a sales tax on real estate designed to create housing, will inevitably drive up costs and become a barrier to affordability in the long run,” stated GBREB CEO Greg Vasil.
Healey famous federal threats to housing Thursday, citing each potential elevated provide prices ensuing from elevated tariffs and the current menace of a federal funding freeze, and stated she would “be prepared to take on whatever we can take on to address what happens on the federal level.”
State officers stated a “full digital version of the plan will be launched in the spring and will include an interactive resource center and production tracking guide.”
